All The Days of My Life (5 page)

They couldn't see why I kept on and on, asking about skipping ropes. Nor did I – I just knew I had to have one. I never said nothing about wanting one because with Sid and Ivy that was generally the way of making sure you never got what you wanted. “You can't have everything you want in this world,” they used to say.

And finally the housekeeper, Mrs Gates, caught me looking at the extra washing line hung up in the washhouse. She knew straight away, being working class herself, what that desperate, staring look meant. So she hauled down the line out of the washhouse, and sent me inside for the big knife she used for cutting up string and big sheets of greaseproof paper, and then she sat down on the grass outside the kitchen door, and cut me off a bit of that white, thick rope. I'll never forget the look of it, lying there, so clean, on the grass. It was a sunny day, too. She made a couple of big knots at each end and I skipped and skipped and skipped – she said I'd wear a hole in the lawn. Of course, I had to skip outside her kitchen door, on the grass in the middle of the vegetable garden. I wasn't supposed to step on the lawn in front of the house. That grass was special. I did it once though because the grass was springier there. I got up very early, before anyone was up. I remember creeping through the silent house and the trees round the lawn with the misty sun coming up over them and going up and down while I jumped, and coming down on the grass, which was all springy and wet with dew, and feeling all that fresh, chilly morning air on my arms and face – then old Benson, the gardener, crept up behind and caught me by the arm and soon put a stop to me. There must have been a row, but I expect I got off by using my blue eyes.

Sir Herbert, as his car passed a glass-fronted pub, where a naked man and woman danced on a small stage, cut the tape recording and began to speak:

The first paper in that unmarked file which was to become so important to me, that first key to the whole affair which was to become
part of the structure of my life for the next forty years, was just a small sheet of my father's old writing paper, headed with our address in Eaton Place. When I first saw it, it must even then have been twenty years old, just as old as I was myself. It was uncrumpled, although marked and slightly roughened by prolonged contact with the cover of the folder in which it lay, on top of the first closely typed page of what looked like a long report. In the centre of the page, in my father's small fine hand, was written an address, no name, just 19, Meakin Street, London. And, in a slightly darker ink, those words were crossed out, and, underneath, in the same hand, was written, Allaun Towers, West Framlingham, Kent.

It looked, somehow, dark as it lay there. Something made me turn from the desk on which the folder rested, with my father's voice still in my ears – “You'd better read all these papers and let me know what you think.” I wanted to escape it. I walked over to the window and looked down into the gardens below.

“It must never leave this office,” he said. “Nor can I ask you to take over this part of the work unless you wish to. I must have your full and willing agreement – or someone else will have to be found.”

“I don't know what it is yet, of course,” I said, temporizing. A flight of shrilling starlings swooped over, blackening the sky.

“You'll have to read it first,” he told me.

I walked away from the window. It was an April day, nearly evening. The garden below was beginning to grow green. So I walked across to take the file from his outstretched hand. I, a young man, who should properly have been excited and intrigued by a part of my new responsibilities, and proud of the trust I knew my father was suddenly reposing in me, felt, nevertheless, a chill. A second later, the file in my hand, I did feel all the appropriate, dignified emotions, and I remember saying, as coolly as possible, “Then I'll just sit down and take a look at it.” I attempted to suppress my enthusiasm, my curiosity and delight, and to sound the proper man I was proposing to become. I remember walking back from the window, sitting down and beginning to read.

I have the file by me now, and the others which followed it. I was curiously reluctant to open it and see again that one sheet of paper, with the two addresses on it. When I opened the file – lo – it was gone! That seems so disappointing, now. There is no mystery – it was otiose, anyway, conveying no useful information: possibly, after all these years, it had either deteriorated to the point where a tidier hand than
mine decided to remove it, or had merely dried, or the holes had torn and it had fallen from the file without being noticed. Nevertheless I recall it as clearly as if I held it in my hand now.

The hot days of June 1941 continued and the days at Allaun Towers fell into a regular pattern. It did not take Mary long to comprehend the differences, physical and moral, between her London life and her country one. Her sheets, in the little servant's bedroom, with the faded roses on the wallpaper, were changed once a week by Mrs Gates. Her new brush and comb, which stood on the marble top of the washstand, were washed in the bath with her every Saturday night, when Mrs Gates bathed her. Her few clothes had to be put in the small chest of drawers in the room, or hung in the pine wardrobe. She woke every morning at seven-thirty, when she heard Mrs Gates creak heavily out of bed in the room next to hers. Then she got up and looked out of the window over the stretch of tiles below, where the roof extended, and off into the sunshine on the lawn where the blackbirds flew, settled, pecked at the dewy grass.

“You up? Good girl,” Mrs Gates would say, putting her grey head, still tousled, round the door. “Get yourself washed now.”

There was a stone sink on the landing. Mary's flannel hung on a brass hook above it. Her toothbrush was in an enamel mug, with Donald Duck painted on it. She would put on the tap and, standing on tiptoe, wash her hands, face and neck with the flannel and a big bar of yellow soap. The water was cold. Then she would go back into her room, wrestle off her nightdress and put on a cotton dress, clean white socks and her new red sandals with the strap with the buckle.

Mrs Gates had stood four-square on the carpet in the drawing room, facing out Lady Allaun who sat, half-turned, at the writing desk. “Only one pair of knickers,” she had told Lady Allaun forcibly, “and those hardly fit for dusters.”

Lady Allaun, blinking as the sunlight flooded in through the long windows said, a little sharply, “Oh, Good Lord, Mrs Gates. I'm writing to Sir Frederick.”

“She's nothing at all to sleep in,” Mrs Gates continued remorselessly. “In her pants and vest, she said. Think of that.”

“Don't tell me any more,” said Lady Allaun, turning back to her
desk, on which the half-finished letter lay. Mrs Gates did not move. After a pause Lady Allaun said, “Of course, in the old days Nanny used to –”

“She'd need new clothes sooner or later, your ladyship,” said Mrs Gates.

“Her family's responsibility,” said Lady Allaun. “But obviously we can't have the child walking about in tatters.”

“I was thinking I could take her into Gladly on my afternoon off and fit her out,” said Mrs Gates.

“That's a good idea – thank you, Mrs Gates,” said Isabel Allaun.

Mrs Gates stood her ground. It was not always easy to get money out of the gentry. Persistence payed. “I have her clothing coupons –” she suggested.

Lady Allaun said, “Yes – I'll give you a cheque to cash in Gladly to cover the cost. About eight pounds should do, shouldn't it?” She took a chequebook from the pigeon-hole in the desk and began to write out a cheque.

“More like twelve would be necessary, your ladyship,” said Mrs Gates, “with today's prices what they are.” She had no wish to go through this scene again in a few months' time, when warmer clothing would be needed for Mary.

“Damn,” said Lady Allaun, making an alteration on the cheque. “I must say I didn't bargain for all this. I hope you'll be as careful as you can, Mrs Gates.”

“Of course, Lady Allaun,” said Mrs Gates in a neutral tone. “Thank you.” She made no attempt to lighten her tread as she stumped back down the passageway to the kitchen.

“Like blood from a stone,” she muttered to herself as she shut the kitchen door behind her, all the more annoyed because now there was no kitchenmaid or parlourmaid to grumble with. There was no Rose, no Maggie. They had both been called up for the army. Sometimes Clarisse, on leave, appeared in the back door with her khaki cap set rakishly over blonde hair a few shades lighter than it had been when she was a parlourmaid, and grinning with bright red lips, might say, “Hullo, Mrs Gates. How's the rubbing and scrubbing these days?” And Mrs Gates, feeling the full weight of her fifty-year-old legs, would reply, with feeling, “None the better for seeing you lounging in the doorway, Clarisse. And if you're coming in my clean kitchen kindly take that fag out of your mouth first.”

“I wouldn't set foot in this kitchen again for five pounds,” Clarisse
would return. “I'm off with my boyfriend to the flicks so keep smiling through, Mrs Gates.”

Mrs Gates was torn between disapproval of these cheeky young things, with their new freedom and contempt for the long-established village rules, and her pleasure that they had escaped, or so it seemed, into a better-paid, more independent life.

Meanwhile, in the big, scrubbed kitchen, there was only tiny white-haired Mary, reading a book with a glass of milk at her elbow. At least, Mrs Gates thought, she'd got the money.

“Lady Allaun has given me the money for some nice new clothes for you,” she told Mary. “Here – are you reading that?”

“I can't understand some of the words,” said Mary, “just the pictures. Jackie taught me some words.” She's sharp enough, Mrs Gates thought. These Cockney kids were.

“You'll learn a lot more when you go to school in September,” she said.

This was a shock for Mary. “Is the teacher nice?” she asked.

“If you behave yourself,” Mrs Gates said. “Anyway, we'll get the bus into Gladly tomorrow and get you some new things. Get rid of them old boots.”

Mary looked at her sharply. “What're you going to do with my boots?” she demanded. “You can't take my boots.”

“Those boots are going in the dustbin,” Mrs Gates said firmly. “There'll be no more boots while you're here.”

“What am I going to wear then?” asked Mary.

“Shoes,” said Mrs Gates.

“Oh,” said Mary excitedly. Shoes were a step up in the world.

The next afternoon, with her hair newly trimmed, so that the blonde curls framed her face, wearing a pink striped dress, white socks and the new red sandals, Mary was taken into the drawing room to thank Lady Allaun. She felt as if she could skip, jump and fly as high as the ceiling. She tried to walk slowly and steadily into the room.

“Mary would like to thank you kindly for buying her the new clothes,” Mrs Gates explained.

“Transformed,” said Lady Allaun, impressed by the beauty of the child. “Well done, Mrs. Gates.”

“Thank you very much, your ladyship,” said Mary.

“Worth every penny,” said Isabel Allaun. “You look charming, Mary.” She picked up her book again. “You might try, Mrs Gates,” she said as an afterthought, “to do something about the child's speech.
It's unpleasant to hear such an ugly voice coming from such a pretty face.”

“Do you hear that, Mary?” said Mrs Gates. “You're to try and speak more nicely.”

“I can speak very nice,” said Mary, exactly imitating Isabel Allaun's voice.

Lady Allaun put the book in her lap. She stared at Mary.

“Say that again,” she said.

“I can speak very nice,” said Mary, just as before.

Lady Allaun, fascinated but not pleased, said, “Quite a little parrot, I see. Well, Mary, that's very good. I can see you're a clever girl.”

“Thank you, my lady,” said Mary, in Mrs Gates' voice.

“My God,” said Isabel Allaun as Mrs Gates led the little girl from the room.

Back in the kitchen the housekeeper confronted Mary severely. “Don't you go putting on them posh airs no more,” she said. “That's for the gentry, not you.”

Understanding that the posh airs must have something to do with her imitations of the voices, Mary said, in her sharp, cockney accent, “What's the gentry, then?”

“Rich people. People what's above you,” Mrs Gates told her.

“Above me?” wondered Mary.

“You're in the kitchen, now,” said Mrs Gates, “and her ladyship's in the drawing room. I work for her, cleaning and cooking, and for as long as you're here you're going to have to do it too – God knows, I need some help. That's the difference – that's all you need to know.”

Mary pouted and said, “How am I supposed to talk then?”

“Not like a guttersnipe, that's for sure,” Mrs Gates said unreasonably. “‘'Ow am I s'posed ter talk' indeed. In the meanwhile, put them dishes away. You know where they go.”

Mary, in the new red sandals, trotted off to the dresser with the dishes, trying not to drop anything.

A year later all the problems had been resolved. All the London children talked in the same slow burr as the village children, except when they formed sides – then the London children would drop back into cockney, to emphasize their solidarity.

Mary had changed. She had gained weight. Her formerly pale face was rosy with health. The following summer she had insisted on having exactly the same sandals she had had the previous year. She still
felt happy, every morning, as she did up the buckles carefully and went down the back stairs to breakfast in the kitchen. It was nearly always the same meal. There was porridge, made with the oatmeal which had stood cooking on the kitchen range overnight, and toast and honey and milk which Arthur Twining, illegally, left for them every morning in a churn on the back step.